Many Tech Start-Ups are calling it quits ... and are being sold for much less than such companies have sold before. "As Funding Dries Up, Fledgling Silicon Valley Firms Are Shutting Down; Fears of Chill on Innovation"
But maybe some energy start-ups are going to make it and maybe make it big. "Solazyme joins algae elite with additional $45M"
"No ponds, no fresh water, no harvesting, no oils. One algal biofuel company says it's found a way to convert algae directly into ethanol on the cheap." "Turning algae into ethanol, and gold"
"Over February 23-25, 2009, more than 800 of the world’s clean technology sector leaders—representing over $3 trillion in capital—together with entrepreneurs, scientists and policy-makers, will convene in San Francisco for Cleantech Forum XXI." "Cleantech Forum XXI: The flagship event convening global clean technology leaders"
Many VC people do -not- have experience in energy or utilities. This is not going to be as natural a transition as semiconductors to personal computers to the internet. And it's going to take 25 years, and there may be a lot of busts along the way. Two-minute video... "VCs not knowing what they're doing"
Schwartz, who did Scenario Planning for Royal Dutch Shell, also challenges assumptions many have about Peak Oil ...
"'We don't know how much is out there,' he said today. 'And they tend to be very conservative, these estimates. And technology changes, and that opens up new reserves deep offshore. When I was at Shell, we could only drill into a thousand feet of water. Today, they're drilling into 10,000 feet of water, and 20,000 feet below that.'
"Peak oil proponents point out that no meaningfully-sized new reserves have been discovered in years, that the oil that is known is relatively finite, and believe it will become too expensive and resource-intensive to produce meaningful amounts of petrochemical products from other known sources of oil like the Canadian tar sands.
"'We are not going to run out of oil before the issue of climate change drives change. It'll be costly oil. But it'll be climate change catastrophes [such as sudden, unexpected displacement of large numbers of people, and massive property damage], and more expensive oil, not the fact that we're running out of oil, that will drive change,' according to Schwartz." "Peak oil "wrong," says Schwartz"
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